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Toronto councillors outraged after shark fin ban struck down

Toronto councillors are expressing outrage and say they may appeal after the Ontario Superior Court overruled the city’s ban on shark fins.

Shark fins sit on sale at Pacific Seafood Trading Company in the Chinatown area of San Francisco. An Ontario Superior Court Judge has struck down Toronto's ban on shark fin.
(LiPo Ching / MCT)

A worker cuts a shark fin at a fish market in Dubai. An Ontario Superior Court judge has struck down Toronto's ban on shark fins, saying the city bylaw fell beyond the city's jurisdiction. (Kamran Jebreili / ASSOCIATED PRESS)

By Micah LuxenStaff Reporter

Sun., Dec. 2, 2012

Toronto councillors are expressing outrage and say they may appeal after the Ontario Superior Court overruled the city’s ban on shark fins.

“I think that decision is fundamentally flawed and fundamentally wrong,” Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker said Saturday, reacting to Justice James Spence’s ruling Friday that a city bylaw banning shark fins fell outside the city’s jurisdiction.

De Baeremaeker, along with Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, was a proponent of the 2011 bylaw that ruled no person shall possess, sell or consume shark fin or shark fin food products within the city.

“There’s no right-thinking person in the city of Toronto who would think it’s acceptable to take an animal out of the ocean, slice off its fins and throw it back in the ocean, where it’s going to drown or bleed to death or be eaten by other animals.”

After city councillors voted in favour of the ban 38-4 in the fall of 2011, Chinese community and business leaders challenged the bylaw in court.

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In their application to appeal, challengers said the bylaw is an insult to the Chinese community; fins are used as an ingredient in shark fin soup, a traditional Chinese delicacy, served at weddings or on other special occasions.

“The city has not banned, or even considered banning, any other food or clothing products enjoyed by any other ethnic groups, where the animals from which the food or skin or fur is obtained are raised or killed in ways that most residents of the city would consider painful and cruel if they were aware of it,” they wrote in their appeal.

In his ruling Friday, Spence agreed with four challengers — Barbara Chiu, Hughes Eng, Peter Tam, and Jacky Ma — who argued the bylaw is constitutionally invalid because the municipality lacks the authority to protect national resources that never come within provincial waters, such as sharks.

John Leung, co-chair of the Fair and Responsible Governance Alliance, who spoke on behalf of the challengers, said he’s pleased with the court decision. “City councillors should focus on the well-being and interests of the city, so they would not waste the city’s resources and the taxpayers’ money.”

De Baeremaeker said he believes Toronto has every right to pass legislation to stop animal cruelty and to ban products from the city.

“We live in a global village. What we do in Toronto impacts the entire world. If we use ivory for our jewelry and piano keys, elephants in Africa get slaughtered — it’s very simple to understand the connection between our actions here and what happens globally.”

Wong-Tam said the city will review its options.

“That includes carefully vetting the ruling to determine our next course of action, and we should not rule out an appeal,” said Wong-Tam.

Sonny Liu, manager of Kyu Shon Hong, a store that sells Chinese food products on Dundas St. W., said Saturday he’s glad the market has opened up.

“Not just the store is happy, but other people are happy as well,” Liu said through a translator. “To us, it’s not that important, but to other people it makes a big impact.”

When the ban was in effect, anyone caught selling, consuming or possessing shark fin would be charged $5,000 for a first offence, $25,000 for a second, and $100,000 for additional offences.

Major cities across Canada, including North Vancouver and Calgary, have banned shark fin products, to protect the species.

Shark finning, the act of removing the fins from sharks and discarding the rest of the carcass, has been prohibited in Canada since 1994, but importing fins from other regions without regulations is permitted.

According to a letter from the office of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, submitted as a court document, only a few shark species are harvested in Canada, including spiny dogfish, porbeagle shark, shortfin mako shark and blue shark. The letter says these harvests are carefully managed, based on the best scientific advice, and they allow Fisheries and Oceans Canada to monitor shark populations in order to ensure their conservation.

Shark fins are usually sold in dried or frozen form. They are virtually flavourless, but add texture to soup.

Liu says shark fins are normally sold around Chinese New Year.

“People don’t buy it [year round] since the cost is really high.” A family, he said, would eat a pound to a pound and a half, at $100 a pound, in a sitting. In China, fins sell for up to $1,300 each.

Ninety-five per cent of harvested shark fin is consumed in China. In July, China banned shark fin soup from government banquets, but the rule could take up to three years to take effect.

WildAid preservation group estimates 73 million sharks are killed every year for shark fin soup. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, one-third of all shark species are threatened with extinction.

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